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The Vanual – Guide to Living in a Van
- kazinator 9y agoAlso doubles as a guide for how to live in an affordable Vancouver, Canada apartment.
- knieveltech 9y agohttps://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/638748223360765953?lang=en https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/63874822336076595...
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoThis is an amazing site! Great work.
- justboxing 9y agoLiving in San Francisco, I've always fantasized about living in a Van and saving 40 to 50K on rent annually. Have a cat. Serious question: I couldn't find a section for the 3 Essential Ss for every man - Sh*t, Shave, Shampoo. What do these guys who live in Vans do for that? I know that the Google dude who lives on Campus in Parking lot can use the Company showers and Toilets, but what about the average everyday man in the City who wants to try this?
- dotancohen 9y agoYou forgot the most important S of all. How do you explain to your date that the vehicle _is_ the destination?
- GuB-42 9y agoJust pick the right date, some of them would be quite excited.
- untog 9y agoWhat would be exciting about going back to a guy's van? I mean, the whole thing is a living standard compromise to save thousands on rent. That doesn't make it an exciting destination - quite the opposite.
- briankelly 9y agoYou're not really considering the demographic here. Pretty much all of the vandwellers I met are surf or climbing bums and some girls are absolutely into that - not to mention a few were girls anyway. Not everybody is after the clean cut young professional life.
- mod 9y ago> the whole thing is a living standard compromise to save thousands on rent. Actually I think you would find that almost universally, that's not the outlook of van dwellers. > What would be exciting about going back to a guy's van? I'm a heterosexual man, so nothing at all would be exciting for me. But I'm willing to consider that others would find it exciting. And quite frankly, I can think of quite a few ladies I know who might. You have not explored a viewpoint other than your own on this topic.
- drdeadringer 9y ago> that's not the outlook of van dwellers. > You have not explored a viewpoint other than your own on this topic. What is the outlook of van dwellers?
- justboxing 9y ago> What would be exciting about going back to a guy's van? So she can tell her girlfriends that she did it in a Van. Jokes aside, isn't it true that most women just wanna have fun / adventure? So it might be a new thing, depending on the lady in question.
- nomadiccoder 9y agoSaving money on rent is a side effect of vanlife, not the premise. Many do it for the geographical freedom.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoIf your social skills are good enough, your date will explain that _their_ place is the destination.
- timthelion 9y agoWhat if they live in a van too?
- pavel_lishin 9y agoThen I guess it won't be a problem for either of you. (Assuming some minimum degree of limberness and agility.)
- detaro 9y agoThere is a section on that: http://thevanual.com/health-and-hygiene http://thevanual.com/health-and-hygiene If you have a bigger vehicle and are doing some modifications you also can fit it onboard - basically add the same kind of bathroom setup any other small RV would have (small enclosed/encloseable space, shower-pan as the floor, chemical toilet, fold-out sink)
- smcmurtry 9y agoSome van dwellers get a gym membership and use the facilities there. If it's a widespread chain then this can work for travelling to multiple cities.
- meritt 9y agoUnless the desire is around building it yourself, why not just purchase a small ~20 ft Class-B or Class-C RV? They have all the amenities built-in (including a toilet, shower, and waste storage tanks). Brand new they can be expensive ($50k+) but these depreciate quickly and you can find them routinely for a fraction of that. If you're in the US, a motorhome counts as a house. Which means loans are mortgages: 15-30 yr terms and tax-deductions on property-tax and interest. (2018 may change that of course).
- Noos 9y agoYou then have to pay to park in campgrounds, and those fees are a huge added expense. Vans are absolutely horrid as houses, but they can hide themselves among normal vehicles to stealth camp on streets and same their owners money.
- jandrese 9y agoHow about a box truck? Seems like it would be a lot easier to hack up the box than a van and you start with much more usable space. They won't look out of place parked on a street either, especially in the lower rent parts of town. You also don't have to worry about cops looking in those pesky windows.
- username223 9y ago3 S's: Starbucks, Starbucks, and... rec center. Your problem living in a van in SF would be parking somewhere reasonably quiet without being harassed by cops, ticketed, or towed.
- nomadiccoder 9y agoIts actually not that hard, Ive only been woken once at night.
- ericmcer 9y agoI lived in a Honda civic for ~2 months in Oakland/Berkeley, and am semi nostalgic about it now that I have a regular housing situation. I would usually mess around at a late night cafe until ~11-12, use the bathroom, go setup car for sleeping and then drive to a good spot. Wake up and go straight to the gym, light workout, sauna, shower, bam ready to go before 8ish. The main downfall was that I am 6'1 and a civic is not ideal for comfortable sleeping. If you really want to try it though just do it some night, I started by just folding the seat down and putting a sleeping bag and pillow across it. It is pretty uncomfortable, but the absence of repetition really slows time and makes each day seem more vivid. Also if you have any qualms about using public restrooms you will get over them real quick.
- justboxing 9y agoInteresting idea. Thanks for sharing. Did you have any issues with attempted break-ins in the car at night? Or was it generally safe?
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI imagine people don't usually break into cars that have people in them.
- jshevek 9y agoHe was living in the East Bay. Thieves there do attempt to steal from cars that have people in them. Also, vandwellers often take steps to make it appear there is no one in the car, so thieves mightn't know until after they've broken in.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kdbg 9y agoShit: rest areas, walmarts, starbucks, cathole in the bush, or a porta-potty in the van. Shave: Grow a beard, truck stop restrooms in the morning, you'll blend right in with the truckers doing the same. Shampoo: In the city swimming pools are a decent bet, sometimes you can just ask if you can just shower and they'll let you. Gym memberships like Planet Fitness can be reasonably priced for just the shower. In more remote areas, campgrounds are a good source of showers, sometimes free, sometimes a modest fee. Plenty of van dwellers will even setup a cleaning area in their van, usually some sort of bucket they can stand in a pour heated water over them selves, or at least a sponge bath. I'm not a fulltime van dweller, I started off just skipping out on hotels during 2-3week long road trips, eventually moved into my car (Pontiac G6) for 6months in the Boston area. Now its more sporadic, a month or two here and there while doing some long distance hiking.
- thsowers 9y ago> eventually moved into my car (Pontiac G6) for 6months in the Boston area. That's crazy! May I ask where you parked in the evenings?
- kdbg 9y agoI wasn't right in downtown Boston but a bit north, I often parked between a few different Walmarts in the area or at the office park the company I worked for had their office in. Though I guess I phrased that a bit poorly, I spent Dec-Mar in the Boston area and fled south after some significant snowfall in January and February (record breaking snow in 2015). While moving it was almost always in rest areas or trail heads (backpacking on the weekends).
- fencepost 9y agoReminds me of a joke I've heard: What's the difference between a thru hiker and a homeless person? Gore-Tex.
- icebraining 9y agoShave? You just need a small basin with some water and a mirror you can hang. And even the latter isn't strictly required.
- mschuster91 9y agoHmm. What I'm dreaming about is doing the same but with a proper bus or an old flatbed truck instead of a van. That allows for stuff like a proper shower and toilet (given you have a place where to dump the sewage, and I don't mean dumping it in the next available river), in addition that you can actually stand up in a bus.
- robohamburger 9y agoWhy not buy an RV? More space or just the fun of customizing the thing from the ground up?
- mschuster91 9y ago1) more space (especially as I'm a 1.87m guy) 2) proper toilet and shower instead of chemo toilet and something that's more a droplet distributor than a shower; in addition you can physically separate the toilet and its gases from your living room. 3) trucks and buses are designed for maintenance by the fleet owners and have space to actually work on the components, in contrast to loads of car based RV models 4) RVs at truck/bus scale are either expensive or so worn-out that a rebuild is the same cost 5) customizing - I like building stuff, for one, and normal RVs don't come with adequate 230V outlets or other IT infrastructure.
- robohamburger 9y agoGood to know! I figured there was a good reason.
- driverdan 9y agoI built my own because RVs in my price range are built like shit. They use cheap materials and low end components. They're designed for occasional use, not full time living. I wanted solar and lithium batteries so I would have had completely redo the electrical system. None of them come with a desk or work area.
- hoprocker 9y agoLove it. Every few years, a site like this gets posted, detailing somebody's transition from rooted to nomadic. If you work remotely, this can be an exciting idea.
- jrgifford 9y agoAs someone who is going through the process of building a van to live in... this is a terrible resource. Better ones are: - Almost anything on https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/ - http://www.alwaystheroad.com/conversion-ebook/ http://www.alwaystheroad.com/conversion-ebook/ - http://www.sprinter-rv.com/sprinter-rv-conversion-sourcebook/ http://www.sprinter-rv.com/sprinter-rv-conversion-sourcebook... - http://vandwellers.org/ http://vandwellers.org/ - https://www.campervanlife.com/ https://www.campervanlife.com/
- dskang 9y agoThanks for the links! I don’t yet know enough to evaluate the quality of the instruction here. Why do you think this is a terrible resource?
- bdickason 9y agoI don't know that it's a terrible resource, I actually think it has a nice layout and has the right type of information, it could just use more breadth. It offers one specific method for each area which you can see on alot of blogs, etc. The approach in paricular (At least for electrical) is also pretty basic and rough. For example - the electrical buildout basically just drills a hole in and epoxied into your roof. As opposed to something like a cable box w/ waterproof connectors. I think it's a great start and would love to see more depth and also a few options like: "Want to power alot of stuff? 400w of panels and 2 deep cycle batteries" vs. "Just need to power a cell phone?" etc. Here's a great guide for the electrical side that I have been working off of for our van: https://gnomadhome.com/van-build-solar-electrical-wiring/ https://gnomadhome.com/van-build-solar-electrical-wiring/ And here's a nice overview which would be good to have for n00bs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k9qlZM1ars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k9qlZM1ars
- micro_cam 9y agoJust glancing through the sight it seems like some things like his insulation strategy are a bit poorly though out. Google around a bit on you'll see there is a lot of debate on how to deal with condensation to prevent rusting out the metal of your van. It isn't clear if he's intending his system to deal with this by creating a vapor barrier with all that spray foam or if he's just going to end up with a bunch of condensation trapped in the space between the foam and the metal leading to rust. And reflextix isn't particularly useful between two layers where it isn't exposed to radiant heat to reflect so I think he just wasted a bunch of money sticking it under the foam.
- Dowwie 9y ago... down by the river. Matt Foley will tell you what his life is all about.
- jmkni 9y agoVintage SNL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2VIEY9-A8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2VIEY9-A8 > Well, la-de-frickin-da, we got ourselves a coder here
- pkaye 9y agoI've read those reflective insulation doesn't do much with keeping out cold.
- prawn 9y agoThe Reflectix would reflect back in your body or cooking heat. It's not going to have a role "keeping out cold". Van converters often use a mixture of foam board insulation, Reflectix, spray on foam, etc to either keep out heat (in Summer) or keep in heat (in Winter).
- Noos 9y agoImagine what will happen if you get the flu. You're suddenly stuck in a tiny living space, on a street where you know no one, and can't leave the van for fear of discovery, at 3 in the morning. You're going to spend the night vomiting with only a tiny cassette toilet and what ever plastic bags you can scrounge up to hold it in, and if it's strong enough, you might be too weak to even drive. Now go and read that site's health and hygiene, realize the owner never even considers this a possibility, and that his own van doesn't even include a cassette toilet. That he can only defecate during a store's business hours, and he uses a laundry bottle filled with bleach to pee into if he needs to urinate in the middle of the night. You really want to listen to this guy?
- jstanley 9y agoJust because it's not for you doesn't mean it's not for everyone. My brother has been living in a van for years and he loves it. Yes, there are tradeoffs, but when you are saving the cost of renting, and gaining a lot of freedom WRT your location, some people are willing to give up a lot of comforts. It's not for me, but I think it's great for people who can tolerate it.
- Noos 9y agoMy point was the moment something relatively minor that happens to us all, happens to a van dweller, it becomes a major crisis. The things we take for granted, like being able to go to the bathroom when we want, or live without fear of police knocking on the door and demanding we suddenly up and relocate because we've broken laws, don't exist for this guy. If he gets into an accident on the road, he just imperiled his entire house. And he's doing it for what? The great experience of having to sleep every night in a wal-mart parking lot or a side street? Not being able to live in one place, invite his friends over to his house, have a long-term girlfriend, and more? Living in a van is hard. It doesn't become less hard because a yuppie does it as a voyage of self-discovery, or makes a pretty web site about it. editing my language some. I'm sorry, I get really strident about things like this.
- yardie 9y ago
- jlebrech 9y agoI'm dreaming of living in a Tesla Semi
- justonepost 9y agoThat’s actually a very cool idea. Truckers sleep in their trucks all the time. You’d have a huge living space. Solar panels, power wall. I wonder how far you could get on that for driving.
- jlebrech 9y agoyou could also have a small cargo area to deliver a few things.
- kristerv 9y agoThe instagram links are broken.
- josmar 9y agoHi! I wonder about anyones experience doing full- or part-time van-life, with an electric van (idea sparked by seeing the Tesla car on YouTube) in Europe?
- kinos 9y agoBeen researching it for a while now. It isn't feasible yet. The best output I've seen is a thousand pounds of hauling on an electric truck. Which is about 200 pounds less than the most efficient truck camper I can find. Thats enough data to extrapolate to most forms of living such as this.
- vantheman 9y agoMore vital information can be found here: http://suspiciousvan.com http://suspiciousvan.com
- wsxcde 9y agoOn a vaguely related note, Nomadland (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34068480-nomadland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34068480-nomadland) is a really good book that describes both living in a van and why a lot of people are considering (aka being forced into) the (van/RV)-dwelling lifestyle.
- zodPod 9y agoIt doesn't really talk about where to park your van. I feel like the hardest part would be understanding where you can sleep and make camp for a time period.
- oh_sigh 9y agoWalmart parking lots welcome van campers
- macintux 9y agoI don't believe that's universally true. Some communities have cracked down on that.
- stevenwoo 9y agoI thought this was on the front page, but it's not true at all of them. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/walmart-parking-rv.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/us/walmart-parking-rv.htm...
- potta_coffee 9y agoThey do welcome vans and campers if the local laws allow them to do so.
- justonepost 9y agoYeah, it’s the biggest issue by far. You have to research into local laws and locations.
- dmh2000 9y agoi don't know if this is the best resource for modding a van, but on the other hand it is the best implementation of a resource for modding a van, by far.
- vadimberman 9y agoI'm sorry, but is living in the Bay Area really worth all this? I remember reading old dystopian sci fi about middle-class people sleeping on the stairs, is that a reality now?
- Fnoord 9y agoHow does this work out for individuals or couples with one or more children?
- guntars 9y agoIt doesn't. You can put yourself through misery and mooching off of the society, but you shouldn't subject children to it.
- cerealbad 9y agojust what is going on with housing in america?
- rasz 9y agoaffiliate spam under the cover of 1 paragraph "tutorials"
- zoom6628 9y agoThis is the most drop-dead gorgeous, well thought-out and smoothest website that i have ever seen. Opened the site and was just stunned at how sensible the structure, transitions are. Brilliant.
- chattychet 9y agoWell done Ryobi. How do we get hipsters to buy tools? Make a beautiful website about living in a van.